Book Review: The Witnesses, by James Patterson & Brendan DuBois

Short. Fast-paced. High impact entertainment. The description of the book, or the BookShots series of James Patterson quite appealed to me. A short thriller is always interesting if done well.

In this book, The Witnesses, the readers follow the story of the Sanderson family… Lance, Teresa and their two children Sam and Sandy. To their new neighbors, something seems to be amiss, enough to suspect even terrorism. But as the story moves to the next chapters, the readers come to know that the family is under witness protection. What one of them has seen puts the family in danger. Jason, in-charge of their protection, has a guilty look according to Teresa. The strict rules for their security begin to agitate the family. What is that danger which that the family can’t be briefed about?

The story lives up to the billing, mostly. It’s definitely short. I finished it in about 3 hours. It’s definitely fast-paced, which helped to finish it quickly. It is entertaining, though I wouldn’t call it high impact perhaps. The story flows from one chapter to another easily. Details about the family’s situation, what had happened etc. are slowly revealed as the story progresses. The main characters slowly develop too. The secondary characters, like Teresa’s cousin, don’t make much of an impact, but do add to the anxiety of a reader. The twist to the tale towards the end was nice, but I anticipated that, so the reveal didn’t wow me much.

Definitely worth the read, and can be re-read too, I feel. This book will be good company for a journey. I look forward to trying out some of the other books in this Bookshots series.

A score of 8 out of 10

Book Details

Title: The Witnesses

Author(s): James Patterson & Brendan DuBois

Genre: Thriller

ISBN/ASIN: B01I2JOSQC

Publisher: BookShots Digital

No payment was taken for this review. The views expressed here are mine, and they remain uninfluenced and unbiased.

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Welcome, dear Bookworm!

Hi there! I'm Vinay Leo R. I'm a bookworm, and as the tagline says, I'm trying to read the world one book at a time!

Many a time I have been so engrossed in a book that I’ve forgotten the world around me. It’s like alchemy for my thoughts, each book transforming a part of me unknowingly, to gold or silver or whatever comparison the world would like to give to pricelessness. I find it a welcome escape to dive into the book, into its words and into its worlds, away from reality for a while. That is, to me, as therapeutic as writing.

This space, which I started in 2013, doesn’t perhaps have my “reviews” per say, but they are thoughts on the book after I’ve read. Hope my thoughts on a book help you to decide if the book is worth exploring or not. Happy reading!

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As of January 2016, the rating system at A Bookworm's Musing allots a score out of 10. For star ratings, the score is halved. If I feel the book has potential, a half-rating like 2.5 or 3.5 etc is rounded to the higher side like 3 or 4 stars. else it is kept to the lower side, like 2 or 3 stars.